im sure everyone is aware of whats going on with this latey and have you check your credit just in case..
i found out from my aunt that her identy was stolen (last week)from her doc office down in nevada, but she lives here in oregon now.

if they even try mine, they wouldnt get much for my credit is already shot

I'd be screwed. Someone already has tried to use my social at a state wide credit union that my grandma runs. Smart people, really.

Thanks for the reminder

my old man got hit maybe two years ago, it took 7 months and a threat of deactivating his card from him to get cleared.

Keep in mind that your credit isn't the only thing that would get screwed due to ID thieves.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about-

I got a letter from a collection agency representing a local phone company (Verizon California) about a rather lofty past-due bill. The total for the bill was for about $400 and hadn't been paid since some time in 2001. The letter had all the just-shy-of-threatening language about how they were gonna put liens on my property and other related garbage.

And all that would be fine, if I had rung up the phone bill in the first place, which I didn't- the phone number was located in Long Beach, California (a place I've only been to around two times) and the phone numbers were all placed to Texas, New Mexico, and parts of Mexico (areas I've never been to in my life).

So I went to my local police department to file a police report, where the desk officer took down all important info. I also put "extended fraud alerts" on my credit file with the three credit-reporting bureaus (Experian, Trans-Union, and Equifax) to let them know what was going on.

I finally got the matter rectified after about two months of arguing with the collection agency's desk jockeys, who seemed unwilling to fathom that ID theft even exists.

So yeah- you MUST report the ID theft to the credit bureaus if you get nicked. You should also file a police report so that

- you can show that YOU aren't the one defrauding people and companies, and

- to at least have some record with the law enforcement agencies in the event they decide to go after the scum.

Other than that, the only thing you can do is get yourself a fancy cross-cut shredder (which will shred any documents you want destroyed into small pieces and NOT those long spaghetti-threads, which can be put together rather easily).

And the most important thing you can do is keep your personal documents personal.